


Trust

by PrairieDawn



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bloodbending, Gen, LLF Comment Project, Minor Injuries, Rope Bridge Trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 04:20:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13919256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: Set between Season 2 Episodes "Desert" and "The Serpent's Pass"Toph freezes when attempting to cross a rope bridge over a dry riverbed.  Katara walks her through it.





	Trust

For once, the full moon wasn’t improving Katara’s mood at all. Its bluish light magnified the tension on Toph’s face, her mouth set into a tight line, her jaw squared with clenched teeth. Toph’s hands gripped the sides of the swaying rope bridge, her toes curled less effectively but no less desperately over the edge of the splintery wooden slat on which she stood braced against a gust of wind. Far below her, jagged rocks cast deep, pointed shadows like so many teeth.

Toph hadn’t moved forward in minutes. The wind was picking up, and the ropes from which the bridge was suspended creaked and popped. “You have to take a step, Toph!” Katara shouted for at least the tenth time.

“I can’t!” Toph yelled back.

“Follow the ropes. One step at a time. You can do it!” You have to do it, Katara thought. That bridge could barely take Katara’s weight. No way could she cross back onto it to help Toph. Sokka and Aang had crossed first without the girls, and though they likely hadn’t gone far, they were out of earshot. Katara didn’t want to turn her back on Toph to find them, not in this wind, not with the way the ropes appeared to be slowly unraveling where they were tied to posts at the lip of the canyon.

There was no water. The ravine the bridge spanned was bone dry, they’d drunk the bending water, and though she could smell water over the next rise in the direction the boys had gone, it was as out of reach as the boys themselves. She and Toph were on their own, Toph suspended out of reach of earth or stone to bend and Katara impotent in this parched landscape. She looked at the full moon again, useless, its power surging through her with no outlet. 

The bridge tilted sharply in a gust of wind. Toph bounced against the ropes and screamed once, the shrill sound echoing up and down the canyon. They should have waited for the boys to miss them and return. Katara should have known that crossing a windswept, unreliable bridge blind would be too much even for the usually fearless Toph. The earthbender had tried to make a stone bridge, but the soft local rock wasn’t strong enough to hold its shape over the distance it had to span. She had littered the canyon floor with failed attempts.

Her senses sharpened in the light of the moon, Katara could feel the blood coursing through Toph’s veins even at a distance, too fast, too hard. “Toph!” Katara shouted.

“Kinda busy not falling to my death here,” Toph snapped.

Katara made her decision. She stretched out her hands, the better to channel the moon’s power. “I can help you move. Try to relax your legs a little.”

“I’m an Earthbender. We don’t do relaxed.”

“Please.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to help you move. You’re a bag of of water, Toph,” Katara explained, her desperation warring with her shame. The less she had to talk about it, the better.

“No way,” Toph scoffed, then squeaked again as another cold gust threatened to throw her off the bridge. “Okay, yes way, yes way!”

Katara took a breath, focused on feeling the water in Toph’s legs, flowing in the veins, bound into the muscle and bone, an effort as absorbing and intimate as healing. Just like healing, she told herself, not really believing it. She moved her body into a position that mimicked Toph’s stance on the bridge. She lifted her own right foot just slightly, mirroring the movement gently on the back of Toph’s right leg, just to start the leg moving forward, then sighed her relief when Toph was able to complete the step on her own.

Right hand, left leg, left hand. They fell into a rhythm, Katara cueing Toph’s limbs rather than forcing them to move, as if Katara were standing behind her, supporting Toph with her own body. If was not as bad as she’d thought it might be. She backed off after four steps, hoping Toph could take over, but the younger girl immediately froze. “Don’t leave me!” she shouted.

“I’m right here,” Katara shouted back. Walking Toph across the bridge was as exhausting as her other brief and unpleasant experience with bloodbending, and was as fussily precise as healing. Her attention was focused so tightly on Toph that rather than hearing the snap when the ropes suddenly gave way, she felt the water in Toph’s body fall and caught it, so that Toph floated, suspended in air above the canyon, held up by Katara’s bending.

Toph held her breath. Katara pulled Toph toward her as gently as she could. Arteries and veins were not designed to be weight bearing structures, and it was obvious from Toph’s pinched face that she was hurting her...not that there was any alternative. She pulled Toph into her arms and they tumbled to the rocky ground, Toph scrabbling away from Katara to lie on her back, feet and hands planted to take comfort from the stone.

Katara crawled over to her, momentarily lacking the strength to stand. “Lie still, I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” Toph protested. She scrambled to her feet and marched away downhill in the direction the boys had taken. She had not used her right arm in getting up and was holding it suspiciously close to her body.

Katara followed, more slowly as the effort she had put forth caught up with her. At the edge of another drop off, Toph dropped to sit cross legged on the ground. Katara caught up, sat beside her. Sokka and Aang were at the bottom of the hill. They were floating on their backs in a large spring fed pool, oblivious to the arrival of the girls. They hadn’t even started a fire yet. Katara blew an errant lock of hair out of her eyes in annoyance.

“You won’t tell them I froze,” Toph said.

“Why would I?” Katara replied. She reached out to touch Toph’s right arm. “I hurt your shoulder when I caught you. I’ll heal it when we get to the spring.”

“You can heal people too?”

She shrugged. “It’s a waterbending thing. Don’t tell them how I caught you, OK?”

“Why?”

Katara stared down at the moon’s wavering reflection in the spring. “I was bloodbending. It’s...it’s not something I usually do. Can’t except when the moon is full. It can be used to control people, so.”

 

“Oh.” Toph gathered a handful of gravel to twiddle in the air, then tossed them so they clattered down the slope. “So you could have just marched me across the bridge like a puppet?”

Katara shuddered. “I wouldn’t have.”

“You would have if you had to. You wouldn’t have let me fall.” She braced her injured arm with her other hand and stood. “Thanks for having my back.” 

“Thanks for having mine.” Katara said.

Toph slid gracefully down the dusty incline, almost as though she were skiing down a snowbank. Katara followed more cautiously, picking her way among the stones. Toph submerged herself to her chest as soon as she reached the bottom, stooping to drink. Sokka met Katara at the water’s edge. “What took you guys so long?” he asked.

“The bridge broke while Toph was crossing. I caught her, but she hurt her shoulder,” she told him briskly. It was as true as they needed to know. “We could have used a little help back there. Don’t go out of earshot again.”

She waded into her element, stopping only to take a long drink and wet down her hair. They’d have to get out soon to keep from getting chilled, but for the moment it felt delicious. “Toph,” she said. “Let’s see to that arm.”

**Author's Note:**

> Story came from my usual attempt at reversing everything: How could we redeem a villain? Why is the moral of this story backwards? How could bloodbending be used benignly, and how would Katara feel about having to use it in that context?
> 
> I love the prickly relationship these two have.
> 
> Also, in case you care, Toph fell about five feet before Katara caught her. She dislocated her shoulder. No biggie in the long run. Toph is a badass and won't cry like a baby in front of Katara.
> 
> This story is part of **the LLF Comment Project,** whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
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